Chitika responds to criticism
Chitika responds to the "audit" criticism in their blog:
http://chitika.com/blog/?p=30
People may not like the responses much, but I'll give them this, they did address the tough questions. Here's an excerpt:
Quote:
Q: Why didn’t you give us the alternate URL feature two months back? Did you plan on keeping that extra cash and not pay us?That is not the case. We don’t get paid for those clicks as well. Why the delay in releasing this feature? We just launched eMiniMalls a few months back and we are aggressively working on introducing and releasing as many options and features. Over the last month we completed releasing the following:
1. Ability to customize colors and settings.
2. Ability to set and track up to 1000 channels
3. Geo targeting so that we can kick start eMiniMalls UK
4. And just this week we completed releasing the Alternate URL
- Y! MyWeb
Comes back to there being no free lunches
As I put in the other Chikita thread, someone has to pay for clicks - i.e. the advertiser.
I cannot find out who on earth Chikita is as a company, and if I were an advertiser (let alone a publisher) would I want to entrust my money to them..
...unless they could offer me something much cheaper than AdSense or any of the PPC programs. So if as an advertiser I was paying less, then publishers would get less than AdSense publishers.
Bottom line, Chikita can only get more per click from an AdVertiser if they can offer better targeted/quality traffic. Out of the startig blocks a few months ago, I cannot see many advertisers willing to gamble on that.
Answers Are Fair Enough
I'll buy their answers with very little skepticism and I'll shoulder some of the blame for not taking advantage of their Alternate URL option even though it took this round of communication to explain how Alternate URL works with their click quality analysis.
But, at the end of the day, the CTR x EPC just doesn't come close to Adsense or YPN. Even on the types of sites it's supposed to.
It's a display format that has merit and where I can use it to plug holes, I will. As usuual, though, I will continue with my passionate love/hate affair with Adsense.